Global devt banks close ranks as AIIB launch nears

Tokyo

FOR the second time in a matter of months, the world's leading multilateral development banks have come together to express solidarity as the start of operations by the rival China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the BRICS Bank approaches.

Last November, in an extraordinary show of solidarity - and what some saw as defensiveness - the multilateral development banks (MDBs) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a joint statement warning of a possible dilution in the "quality of spending" with the imminent entry of two new development banks - the AIIB and the BRICS Bank or New Development Bank - into the field.